


the violent crack of atoms (where all light comes in)

by indefinissable



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fallen Star Castiel, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sick Sam Winchester, Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 02:07:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8082493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indefinissable/pseuds/indefinissable
Summary: Sam told Castiel that something had called out to him like the whistling of windchimes in the trees, a winding path of shimmering candles guiding his feet through the tangled underbrush, leading him to the place where Castiel had fallen.





	

Even after he falls, Castiel can still feel the stars.

If he had to describe it in terms of human anatomy, he might liken the sensation to a phantom ache in his bones, stretching across broken synapses and snapped nerve endings in search of a lost limb. At times, the faded imprints of shimmering nebulae and the brilliant supernovas that birth new galaxies flicker incessantly across the backs of his eyelids, sparking pinks and blues and whites so bright it dazes him. Echoes of mournful tones that haunt the immeasurable distances between stars resonate through him like the thrumming rush of blood, building to a crescendo so magnificent he is immobilized, deafened to all else.

In those moments, Castiel’s body is a prison, fabricated from earth and bone, hollow and empty and so small he thinks he might suffocate.

Sometimes, Castiel is sure Sam feels the same way. Sam, who has never known the cosmos as Castiel has – intimately, with all its slow-moving galaxies and radiant emerald suns and tremendous black holes, all the little lights that twinkle like specks of dust in the spaces between atoms, shaping and re-shaping the patterns of the stars in each moment. Sam, who has lived out his life on one, solitary, spectacularly small bit of rock drifting blind and unnoticed in the dark.

Sam has never known the stars, but he has perceived things beyond the human mind’s capacity to understand. When he found Castiel, naked and burning still in a smoking crater of earth, the sight should have scorched his eyes from his skull. Yet he simply shielded his face and waited patiently as Castiel’s light diminished and his body formed under the clear night sky.

Later, Sam told Castiel that something had called out to him like the whistling of windchimes in the trees, a winding path of shimmering candles guiding his feet through the tangled underbrush, leading him to the place where Castiel had fallen.

When the blinding light faded and Castiel lay in the dirt in human form, shivering and utterly alone in his own body, Sam climbed down into the crater, stripped off his coat, and wrapped Castiel in it.

The first thing he asked was Castiel’s name.

+ 

Castiel knows that Sam often sees and hears things that appear to him alone. Sam, too, has seen the crackling impressions of long-dead galaxies, heard the stars calling to each other across vast expanses of space like breath echoing in a glass bottle. He often sits for long hours on the ground, unresponsive, with his face tilted skyward, unblinking and searching vacantly for something his eyes will never behold, occasionally murmuring insensibly. Other times, he claps his hands over his ears, moaning and flinching at any touch, his face pinched with in pain.

Once, Sam’s eyes rolled back in his head so only the whites were visible and he went abruptly limp, a marionette with cut strings. He lay twitching and jerking on the ground so long Castiel thought he might die. He cradled Sam’s head in his lap and stroked his hair and said comforting things until Sam stopped seizing and came back to himself.

In doing so, Castiel found a knot of scar tissue at the base of Sam’s skull. When his thumb brushed against it, Sam’s eyes opened. His speech was slurred almost beyond comprehension, but Castiel thought he said, “Dean.”

When questioned later, Sam said he couldn’t remember what he had seen, and seemed to have no memory of saying anything.

Most people call Sam’s odd behaviour madness, and either stare openly or pointedly pretend he doesn’t exist. Sam dislikes making people uncomfortable. Castiel suspects this is at least partly why he lives alone in the woods outside of town, in a one-room cabin he built with his own hands. It smells of clean pine and is furnished sparsely, with a low wooden bed in the corner, a table with two chairs in the kitchenette, an old sofa of worn leather and a trunk where Sam keeps his clothes. Several neat stacks of books line the walls.

There’s a sturdy wooden box under the bed that Sam never opens. He keeps the windows shut and sleeps with a knife under his pillow. He says he doesn’t mind living alone. He smiles easily, but Castiel perceives an immovable sadness in him. Sometimes, Castiel wakes suddenly in the night with the stars dazzling his vision, buzzing under his skin, and finds Sam shivering under the blankets next to him, gasping in little shuddering breaths, his cheeks slick with tears. In those moments, Castiel is overcome with the urge to reach out and touch Sam, to find all the hollow places inside him and mend them with whatever dulled starlight he still carries in his body. Castiel whispers Sam’s name into the space between them while he shakes, dries his tears with the edge of the blanket. Reaching out across an immeasurable distance.

Sam tells Castiel he isn’t sure how long his body and mind will hold out against the things only he can hear and see. Castiel has seen the toll it takes on him. Sam suffered a migraine for days after he found Castiel, brought him home, and laid him down in his own bed. He has nightmares often, moans in his sleep and murmurs things, _stop_ and _please_ and _Dean, no._ Sometimes he spikes fevers that last a week, or his body temperature drops so low his lips turn blue and his teeth clatter like the rattling of hail on the cabin’s tin roof.

Castiel tries to help when it happens. He brings Sam water and reads to him from the yellowed paperbacks stacked against the wall. In words Sam’s fragile mind can comprehend, Castiel speaks about the universe, the colours of the stars and the shapes of their names, the precise tone of their long-faded songs.

 +

One night, Castiel perceives movement nearby in the earth’s atmosphere. Outside the cabin, the autumn sky is cool and deep indigo, glittering weakly with the distant light of billions of dead stars. Something hums deep within the marrow of Castiel’s bones, vibrating under his skin and around him. Pulling him.

He wakes Sam with a gentle hand to his forehead. Sam’s face, neck, and hair are tacky with drying sweat, which Castiel wipes away with a damp cloth. The fever that has clung stubbornly to him for days now has finally broken, and when he rouses his eyes are glassy but track Castiel’s movements with little effort.

“Cas?” Sam’s voice is hoarse with illness and sleep. “What time is it?”

“Come with me,” Castiel murmurs.

The bright greens and blues of Sam’s eyes are darkened to black by the low light. The thing reverberating through Castiel’s body is insistent, a sharp ache tugging behind his navel.  

Castiel draws Sam up, helps him get his coat on and pulls thick wool socks over his bony feet. Sam is unsteady, wrung-out from fever, and he leans on Castiel. The night air is chilly, and Sam shivers a little when they make their way out into the dark, leaving their warm bed behind.

They wind slowly through the trees in silence. Castiel is drawn forward sightlessly with every step by the particles of stardust still thrumming in his cells. He curses himself briefly for forgetting to bring a lamp for Sam, until Sam gestures at the dark, sloping ground and says, soft and awed, “Castiel. The lights.”

The stars guide Sam, too, in their way.

They climb steadily upward for a while, until they reach a clearing where the treeline suddenly falls away and the sky stretches endless in every direction, broken only by the curve of the earth. Castiel removes his coat, spreads it on the ground and helps Sam sit. He remains standing, lets his fingertips touch Sam’s shoulder, the soft strands of his hair, the warmth of his cheek.

Sam inhales. The air smells of ozone, bright and sweet like before a rainstorm.

Castiel says, “Look,” just as the first meteor touches the earth’s atmosphere and explodes into brilliant white fire, burning and breaking into dust on impact. Castiel’s body hums at its closeness.

“Oh,” Sam says. He struggles to his feet and stands next to Castiel, gripping his sleeve for support.

Another blaze of light sparks incandescent in the inky sky, trails a gleaming path downward.

Castiel says, “Have you seen this before?”

Sam hums. “My brother...” He trails off, trying to chase the memory through the ruined pathways of his mind, shaking his head sharply when he fails.

Time passes, and the lost bits of stars fall to earth around them. Castiel feels wetness on his cheeks and his chest aches dully.

After a while, Sam says, “Do you think any of them are, y’know. Like you?”

Castiel shakes his head, and his voice cracks strangely around the word, “No.”

Sam begins to rub his back in slow, rhythmic circles, which Castiel finds soothing. A particularly bright flash of light makes Sam flinch and a wounded sound escapes his throat. He sways a little on his feet.

“Why don’t we sit down?” Castiel says, and lowers them both down onto his coat.

Sam rests his head on Castiel’s shoulder, touches the tips of their fingers together.

As the tide of raining stardust ebbs, the itch of loss in the spaces between Castiel’s ribs lessens. In its place, something else begins to bloom, beating warm and hopeful like the wings of a hummingbird, or a bumblebee, or any of the other little creatures that nest in the trees or burrow in the soft earth to sleep.

Sam says, “Most meteors are smaller than a grain of sand.” His breath touches Castiel’s hair, warm and close and humming with life.

**Author's Note:**

> As usual with my writing, whether the pairing is romantic or platonic or something else has been left ambiguous and for you to decide!
> 
> Originally posted on tumblr [here](http://i-am-therefore-i-fight.tumblr.com/post/149885356005/the-violent-crack-of-atoms-where-all-light-comes) as a submission to [Ruby](http://i-am-therefore-i-fight.tumblr.com), who has written some gorgeous star!Castiel in the past. 
> 
> Find me [@withthedemonblood](http://withthedemonblood.tumblr.com).


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